


a midnight song for a ghost

by Hyoushin



Series: blue winter roses [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Gen, Jon Snow is King in the North, Jon-centric, Weirdness, post-resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyoushin/pseuds/Hyoushin
Summary: Dead men do dream.





	a midnight song for a ghost

Nowadays, the cold is all he knows.

It's odd. Because there's also a burning in his chest and a burnt taste in his mouth that refuses to be washed away. Two sensations attempting to coexist by taking turns, but hogging the space for a midpoint in their greed.

He looks at himself in the mirror and he stares long and hard, eyes unblinking, until moisture gathers at the corners, blurring his reflection past recognition. There's only brown and gray and an otherworldly paleness. Through the cracks, he spies other northern faces, just as worn and weary but with an ancient wisdom reached in their infinity.

His is a Stark face. And if he concentrates he might find a soft mien, playful and brightened with a love reserved for him. He is tempted to look for it but reins himself in. For he could encounter in its stead a red-blue visage distorted by rancor. He prefers to avoid the dead women who come knocking, mistaking him for a boy abandoned in a cell of ice.  
  
He indulges the thought of what could it be like to give and receive love and affection, esteem and admiration, because he's aware he wasn't always more of a remainder of a man than an actual man. Such things, however, are now little more than emaciated dogs straining their iron chains. He supposes he’d be able to catch them if they ran off. If there ever were a reason for them to run and for him to catch them. But this was a constant rumination reduced to a mere foolish vagary.

A subdued brilliance distracts him, his eyes alighting on the crown fixed on his head. Heavy but simple and practical looking, this is his crown. A solemn affirmation not an ornate boast. But even after all the moons that have waxed and waned, he still isn't sure what to make of the sight.

Some things won't ever be right.

Out, over a snow-white ravaged plain, twin howls resound; theirs is a wail stretching itself into the middle of the night. It comforts him.

The light from the hearth dies down. He isn't afraid of the dark anymore. He turns and leaves a chamber that wasn't meant to be his.

Tonight, he is more like a thief, stalking silent through shadowed passages to seize coveted riches.

The crypts welcome him back. A court of stone ushers him in as the black embraces him and swallows him whole. In this place, he occasionally shelters from the chaos of the outside. He’s grateful for the reprieve that it offers, even if it is used to brush through the memories of someone else.

A man can be assigned many names and be branded by what they mean. Jon Snow is the one most alien and familiar. He doesn't feel like letting it go for something else grander, and hollow, and better suited to what he has become.

"What do you think, uncle?" He says to the stone likeness of Lord Eddard Stark. "How am I doing so far?"

"We, men, have a knack for surviving our horrors." He thinks he can hear a long, sad sigh. A breeze from nowhere ruffles his hair, turning the weight upon his head into the fleeting tenderness bestowed by a broad hand—unexpected emotion bursts out of a buried moment almost whimsically recalled, and it grows into an avalanche that overpowers a man benumbed by deadly circumstance.

Jon gasps, his tall frame shudders, and his heart kicks his ribcage in gleeful retribution. It feels like waking up. Or has he slipped into yet another dream?

It's hard to tell these days.

The gazes of his forebears witness his sliding to the ground. He remains nestled against stone and reflection, calming his breathing and the wild beat of his otherwise idle heart. It's always the little details, surfacing from the shreds of a torn life, affecting him to such an extent.

In truth, he doesn’t mind it when that dead, half-forgotten boy steals into his mind. It is as though life is, once again, being breathed back into him: a jolt of vitality first and then a gradual ascent to consciousness and rationality.

A new presence approaches. He identifies her quickly, he simply knows who she is. She doesn't need light to see, always dancing unafraid into the unknown. She sits beside him, drapes a quilt over them. He appreciates the intent even if all the warmth continues to flee, unable to physically restrain it, hold it near.

The woman, whose name he learned was Arya, doesn't bother to ask if he's been sleeping. She already has an answer. He can go without for far longer than what is normal. But nothing is as it should be. For them and for everyone else. 

Perhaps they'll get there, to something like a cease-fire. They would be fortunate if they live to experience it in this lifetime. His sporadic flares of hope are rare but inspiring, or so he's been told while Arya puts on a wry secret smile for anyone who notices.

For now, however, he allows himself to drift, lulled by a scent so lethally sweet it could end him permanently if it should overtake him. So he reposes, carefully, against her; with the certainty that she'll be watching over him until it's time to rise.

It is curious how, whenever she stays like this with him, he is pulled into _dreams about roses in bloom and Jon believes he feels butterfly kisses raining down upon him endlessly._

 _From a black void, wafts out a reedy, broken scream: I am—of Winterfell. Snow melts in his tangled red hair as he scales a castle to take flight. He falls into a pool of water warmed by the sun and he emerges to hear old spirits lost under a white storm_ _say_ , all of us are one and the same

“Not yet,” she whispers. “Sleep some more.”

So still he sits, with Longclaw across his lap and stone wolves by his feet. He flexes the fingers of a scarred hand. “I’m trying.”

She ponders for a second and then starts humming a foreign tune. Its gentle ups and downs shoo away the wisps of a new dream. For the first time in a long while, there’s only rest, and the dark, and the kings and queens of winter looming over them, voicelessly conveying _you are us and we are you._

A smaller hand closes over his own.

He sleeps.


End file.
